Despite recent polls predicting that Joe Biden looks to be the favourite for the job in the White House come November, it has been reported that a Stony Brook University professor, whose ‘Primary Model’ has correctly predicted five out of the last six elections, believes that Donald Trump is almost certain to win the race for re-election. According to Helmut Norpoth, his model gives Trump a 91% chance of serving a second term. Norpoth said the model, which he made in 1996, would have correctly predicted the result of all but two presidential elections in the last 108 years, stating ‘This model gets it right for 25 of the 27 elections since 1912, when primaries were introduced’.
Norpoth’s model not only predicts Trump will win, it suggests the current Leader of the Free World will expand his margin in the Electoral College from 304 electoral votes in 2016 to 362 in 2020. Interestingly, the 362 is very close to the 365 Barack Obama won in 2008.
It's reported that the model works by calculating the candidate’s chance of winning based on their success in early presidential nominating contests. This puts Biden at a major disadvantage due to his big losses in his party’s first two presidential nominating contests. In Iowa he only managed fourth place with just under 16% of the vote and in the New Hampshire primary he was fifth with less than 8.5% of the vote.
Norpoth stated that where the model succeeds is by placing more emphasis on how much enthusiasm candidates can generate early in the nominating process, and by discounting public opinion surveys. He told the digital news site, Mediaite, ‘The terrain of presidential contests is littered with nominees who saw a poll lead in the spring turn to dust in the fall’ adding ‘The list is long and discouraging for early frontrunners. Beginning with Thomas Dewey in 1948, it spans such notables as Richard Nixon in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1980, Michael Dukakis in 1988, George H.W. Bush in 1992, and John Kerry in 2004, to cite just the most spectacular cases’.
However, just to put a spanner in the works, the 91% chance of winning, according to Norpoth’s website primary model.com, used a Gallop poll figure of 49% approval rating, which has since dropped to below 40%.